Never Mind the Acorns, Here's the Killer Bambies
by Steveothepirate
Summary: Upon being fingered as the leading culprits of Canada's "decaying moral values", Candy Cane and the rest of the Killer Bambies are sent fleeing from the country in a race to save themselves and the music industry from a hell-bent radical: Ms. Spencer.
1. Meet the Bambies

**Hello, dear readers. Before we begin, I am obligated by the laws of the state of Texas to inform you that… well, that can wait. More pressingly, I am obligated by the rules of this site to inform you that I do not own Rumble Roses, nor do I own the characters therein. Thanks.**

**With that out of the way, onto the story, or rather, the prologue leading into said story, as you won't find too much plot development in this first chapter. Still, read on!**

**Chapter 01- Meet the Bambies**

"Alright you," the schoolgirl snarled. "I don't like you and you don't like me, but just this one time, we have to work together."

This wasn't the first time Rebecca Welsh had found herself staring down this particular behemoth. In fact, she'd done It at least once or twice every other day for quite some time now. The whole situation was dosed in a wave of déjà vu, although it did nothing to quell the situation's uncomfortable nature.

"Because if we don't cooperate," she continued, "one of us is going down. Got it!"

After her semi-threatening statement, Candy backed away, starring a hole through the large mass that stood before her.

She then held up a crumply dollar bill.

"If you spit this out one more time," she began, "then I'm bustin' out the glass!"

After smoothing it out in-between two of her fingers, Candy Cane turned her dollar sideways and again stubbornly attempted to slide it into the "1 Dollar" slot on the vending machine.

"Vvveerrkkk," the dollar was sucked into the inner-workings of the hulking candy dispenser.

She paused to see if her currency would again be rejected, for such had been the norm for the last couple of minutes, but after a moment of waiting, her confidence was assured.

"Yes!" Candy pumped a fist.

The punk proceeded to step up to the glass with glee, taking note of the numbers under a few snack items that caught her interest as she thought about which one to buy.

"Wouldya hurry it up, Candy!" a voice from across the hallway cried.

"Gimmie a second, would ya!" Candy yelled back, maintaining her focus on the vending machine stubbornly.

Giving her choices one last scan, Candy Cane finally decided on a stick of taffy and proceeded to punch in its corresponding number on the machine's keypad.

"Seriously, Candy?"

This time, she tore herself away from the snack dispenser and gave one of the three girls down the hall her begrudging attention.

This wasn't the first time Rebecca Welsh had found herself staring down this particular trio of women. In fact, she'd done It at least once or twice every Sunday for as long as she could remember. It occurred at least once or twice every time she and the rest of the Killer Bambies assembled for a practice session.

Mandy, the guitarist, stomped her white platforms and marched-towards Candy whilst fiddling with the tie of her pink button-up top.

She came to a stop, indignantly swatting a mendful hand at the almost Elvis-harking quiff she proudly sported before smoothing-out the scrunchied-roll in its back. With her golden-brown hair tended to, the Eisenhower-era enthusiast firmly placed her hands on the waist of her red-rimmed white poodle skirt, looking as if she had stepped-out of a Roy Lichtenstein painting, or a 50's summer flick. Sighing, she closed her sky-blue eyes on a tempering breath before asking in her Brooklyn-awarded accent,

"What's takin' you so long!"

"I'm just trying to get a candy bar!" Candy replied, dripping with sarcasm. She crossed her arms whilst asking ever so sincerely, "Is that alright with you, Mandy?"

"It would be if you weren't takin' so damn long!" Mandy wasn't amused.

And there was of course Brandy, the drummer, looking-on from the other end of the hall through black eyeliner and a sole bang of blazingly blonde hair that crept just past her ears, her wide, lamentful eyes locked on the two, each of them trembling at the prospect of the ensuing quarrel.

She stood with her gloved hands cupped gingerly on the ends of her burgundy jean-jacket, partially obscuring the broken heart on the black t-shirt underneath, tucked neatly into her tight dimly-grey pants plastered to her skinny frame, boasting the same fashionable smudges and faint bleach-spots as the jacket. She would slowly raise an unsteady hand as her voice meakly squeaked-out,

"H-hey, come on, guys…"

Finally, Sandy, the bassist, would be off to Mandy's side, propped lazily against the wall. Mandy might have looked as though she had stepped-out of a 50s summer film, but Sandy looked as though she had stepped-out of a 50s monster film, and purposely so.

Sandy towered over everyone else at nearly 6'4, not including her hair, teased-up and out to a gigantic measure. It was undeniably mane-like, straight and shattered, jet black, sans a pair of bangs notably longer than the rest in the front dyed a vibrant red for when she felt like letting said bangs down for a devillock to loom in front of an eye or her nose.

The self-fancied "Fiendish Femme" of the group, the bassist's pale complexion was contrasted by her constant garbature of overwhelmingly black clothing, allowing only traces of blood-red to provide her palette with anymore color. A touch of eyeliner, a black leather biker's jacket with the sleeves hacked-off (effectively making it a vest), black leather pants, red brothel-creepers, and a tattered midriff-less tanktop stating "I Love Cthullhu", a statement that bore no irony when borne by her.

She gave the ensuing squabble little regard. Normally, Sandy would at least roll her eyes at the whole mess, but she couldn't even be bothered to do so in this instance, as she rather preoccupied with said eyes locked into a "LaVeyan Satanism for Dummies" book, far too enthralled in reading about the finer points of Walpurgisnacht to interject as Candy and Mandy proceeded to bicker as they had been for a better part of the day.

"Well," Candy pulled an exaggerated smile, "I wouldn't be 'takin' so damn long' if someone wasn't freakin' bugging me the whole time!"

"Just hurry it up," the guitarist groaned through somewhat gritted teeth.

"Hey," Candy jabbed a finger at Mandy. "Don't rush me; you've been rushing me all day!"

"Well how long does it take to get a damn candy bar!" Mandy flung her arms up questioningly.

"How long does it take to learn that damn Cramps song?" Candy quickly retorted, an actual laugh creeping into her words.

"Oh, that's real cute!"

"Yeah, unlike that haircut!"

"Oh! Now we're getting clever, aren't we!"

Things were less venomous with the other half of the band down the hall. Catching Brandy just over the rim of her book, Sandy noticed that she was… shivering, cautiously giving glances towards the two currently-feuding members of their foursome.

"Say, Brandy?" Sandy was sure to ask casually, her alto-toned vibrato getting her accostee's attention. She raised the book up displayfully, "This LaVery guy's pretty interesting…"

"Maybe I wouldn' be rushin' you if we wasn't supposed to be in class in five minutes!"

"We're always late anyway, so who cares!"

Hesitantly, the drummer struggled to avert her gaze from the adumbrately volatile clash between Candy and Mandy to the safety of Sandy's towering, cadaverous person to which she was beckoned.

"R-really?" Brandy tried coating the question with an upward inflection, although their was no hiding the fact that she was near pouting. Her hands slowly stroked a lock of her hair as her eyes struggled to refrain from looking forwards. "Who is he?"

With a slight bit of joviality, Sandy went about flipping back to a certain page before returning her eyes to the blonde.

"Well, he's got this whole religious sort of ideology called 'Satanism', and some of the little commandment deals he's got listed in here are pretty nice."

She paused for a moment, allowing Brandy to give a feeble nod before returning to the book, scanning its current page for a particular line.

"Like this one," Sandy jabbed a finger once she found it, and recited, _"If someone bothers you, ask them to stop. If they do not stop," _she had to pause for a grin here, _"destroy them"._

Brandy's eyes sank.

"'Destroy them'?"

"Yeah," Sandy smiled. "Cool, right?"

Brandy's eyes, still heavy, turned to the left.

"Ms. Spencer's gonna be pissed, Candy!"

"Then let her be pissed; I want a freakin' snack!"

"I don't care for conflict," her head slowly dropped with a whining murmur.

"Oh, right…," the smile left Sandy's face. She looked to Brandy's current source of wrought emotions, finding that the altercation was beginning to escalate in volatility, and also wit.

"Ay, fuck you!"

"Fuck you, too!"

Brandy's gentle strokes of her hair were slowly morphing into rougher tugs. She felt her legs beginning to tremble.

"What'd you say!"

"You heard me!"

As the two feuding Bambies stepped closer to one another, Sandy's eyes went down to the book in her hand.

"I should kick your ass!"  
"I'll kick _your_ ass!"

Tinges of pain were being sent through Brandy's slowly stretching hair follicles as her trembling grasp tightened, hoping to hold her mind onto those tinges, not wanting it to wander onto any other thought, or that her heart was almost beating through her shirt.

"You couldn't kick my mom's ass!"

"Your mom's a whore!"

They were practically nose-to-nose at this point. Sandy's nose was deep in her book as she reread a particular passage.

"At least I got one!"

"You think that's funny!"

"Yeah, I do!"

"You won't think it's so funny when I ki-"

"AHH!" Brandy let out a yelp.

Mandy and Candy looked to the source of the sudden yelp just in time to see a projectillic hardback book careening towards them, barely ducking out of its path and leaving it to smack against the nearby wall before plopping onto the floor. Instinctively. their eyes snapped to the book's origins, seeing Sandy, her eyes practically burning through their own, standing in front of Brandy with her arms pointedly crossed.

"Jesus Christ, Sandy!" Mandy practically squealed, her eyes wide as saucers.

"What in the hell was that!" Candy stammered, visibly shaken.

Sandy continued standing there, static in spite of her targets' shared animation. The tension demanded that a silence and stillness fall over the group.

"Are you done?" the beastly bassist tilted her head with a simple question, the surreal calmness of which soon dawned on the two.

"Y-y-you just threw a freakin' book at us!" Candy jabbed a damning, yet almost vibrating finger towards Sandy, intimidation unsteadying her joint-control.

"Annnnd?" Sandy cocked an eyebrow, sneering through her teeth.

Mandy smirked through her nose, slowly beginning to take a few sauntering steps up to the Cthullhu enthusiast, dodding her head left and right.

"Aaaannnd…," she laughed, then her smile instantly faded just before she practically leapt at Sandy, grabbing her jacket. "Sowhatthahelliswrongwithyou!"

Sandy shoved the guitarist off of her.

"You two have been at it all day!" she nearly stomped a foot as her voice was finally risen to a yell. "What's the problem now!"

"Hey, _I_ was just trying to get a candy bar," Candy took a step forward, pleading her case, "but _someone_ kept interrupting me!"

"Ay, I just thought she was takin' too long!" Mandy cut-in quickly. "We're already late fo'class as it is, ya know!"

Sandy breathed heavily through her nose as somewhat of a smile crept into her lips, accompanied by a roll of her eyes as the fire that had previously burned in them seemed to dwindle. She opened her mouth to speak, but was stopped when another voice spoke for her.

"Just let Candy get her candy and we'll all go!" Brandy's voice came in a quick blurt of words from behind Sandy. Surprised, the ghoulie girl stepped off to the side, gently ushering the drummer towards the previously feuding pair with a quick nudge.

Once center-stage, Brandy's eyes darted back to Sandy, getting a frantic nod of encouragement, then back to Candy and Mandy, getting a pair of confused, and almost shocked looks, though they went unnoticed by Brandy, then sporting a "deer in the headlights" expression. Had she actually said such a daring thing? In such a loud way? What was she supposed to do now?

"Is…," the drummer began to whimper something out merely because she felt obligated to do so, "… is that alright with you guys?"

There was another beat of silence. Candy and Mandy mutually wilted at their drummer's vulnerable display, only to feel a bit of guilt bloom inside their stomachs upon realizing what had caused her clearly distraught state.

"Ehh, yeah," Mandy began gingerly after a moment of thought, forcing a reassuring nod out of herself as she tacked-on, "Don't worry, Brandy. We're fine."

"Right!" Candy attempted to beam, going so far as to slap a friendly hand on Mandy's shoulder. "See? Look, we're cool. See!"

They both paused a moment, hoping for a gaugable reaction from the drummer. They didn't receive much of one, but the fluncidness of her previous expression had visibly improved just enough to where it could be read as content.

"Yeah," Mandy dryly returned the pat. Content was enough of a go-ahead for her.

Rebecca sighed.

"Say, let's just go to class, alright? Forget all this stuff, 'kay guys?"

Brandy managed a strained "mhm" whilst the other two Bambies gave their vocalist a nearly simultaneous nod. She stepped forward, stopping to give Mandy one last look before she continued on down the hall towards the group's shared Bio-Chem class. Mandy soon followed, hesitating to give the book at the other end of the hallway a concerned parting glance.

As Brandy went in-toe, Sandy lingered behind, going the opposite direction, ultimately retrieving her book. Upon scooping the torpedo-sent tome from the ground, she went about fingering through its pages back to that prompting passage she had taken to heart,

"If someone bothers you, _ask them to stop. _If they do not stop, destroy them".

"G'ah," she groaned, shutting the book. "I knew I forgot something…"


	2. Ticket to Riot

**Hello again, dear readers, and welcome to another chapter of this little story of mine. Not quite as many laughs in this one, I wouldn't think, but it serves well to set-up the rest of the plot. Really, it's "part 2" of the prologue, and could've probably just been a part of the previous chapter, but I felt it held enough importance to be its own. **

**Still don't own Rumble Roses or any characters therein, sadly enough.**

**Chapter 2- Ticket to Riot**

As she entered Miss Spencer's classroom, proudly labeled with a "Muriel Spencer - Teacher of the Year" plaque, Candy's eyes lazily glided across the room, finding it to be then as it was every other time she entered.

Candy's gaze waded through the sea of various faces that was the majority of her fellow 6th-period Biology students, seated in the room's five rows of white, commons-styled tables. Said sea was devoid of any ripples or waves that ever prompted much of Rebecca's attention, as everyone seemed to blend together in a sort of wash of polo shirts and blue jeans, save for the two girls sitting at 'that' table at the far-left end of the back-row, one persistently tending to her quiffed hair with a comb, and the other with her own bleached-yellow hairdo styled into an emo bang.

She made her way towards her seat, taking note of the generic "motivational" posters on the back wall before reaching her destination after just a few short steps.

She took her spot at the left of Mandy, leaving an empty chair between herself and Brandy. They quickly exchanged brief looks, having already said their initial hellos (and more recently, their fuck-offs) well earlier in the day. Even so, the trouble of verbal greetings really had long since become an unnecessary effort.

Candy's intended quick look to Brandy lingered a bit, as the redhead found herself watching the drummer's pupils, made all the more visible via her eyeliner, dart to and fro from her notebook's steadily-filling page and Ms. Spencer up at the chalkboard scribbling-out some lecture notes at the front of the room.

Brandy always took notes, as did Sandy, although the drummer's reasons were merely grade-related, comparatively inambitious next to the bassist's hopes of quelling-together the proper concoction of chemicals with which to create a worldly-potent zombie virus.

"Hey, Brandy?" Candy started unsteadily, her voice very gentle. Brandy halted her note-taking. "I was just wondering about what hap-"

"No, it's ok. Really," the drummer stammered with little punctuation.

Rebecca turned to Mandy, who shrugged her shoulders at the unverbalized question, going back to dutifully combing-up her hair.

"Are you sure?" Candy uneasily turned to Brandy again. The blonde's shoulders visibly tensed-up. "I mean, that wasn't exa-"

"Hey," Mandy swatted the singer's shoulder, speaking in a hushed tone which prompted Candy to lean an ear in towards her.

"Leave 'er alone already, alright? She said she's fine!"

Candy's eyes narrowed, her face assuming the same character of her guitarist's: pissed-off.

"I was just making sure!" she hissed, leaning in towards Mandy.

"Well, she said she was fine five minutes ago," Mandy's teeth were almost gritted, the snarled muffle of her words increasing, "so I don't think much has changed!"

"Hey!" Candy shot in closer, again nose-to-nose with her brown-haired bandmate. Before they proceeded bickering, the two paused to give their drummer a mindful look. Her shaking shoulders went mutually unnoticed, and so they went on with said bickering, although the pause let their tempers simmer from the boiling temperatures they neared previously.

"What's up your ass today, anyway?" Candy sneered.

Mandy's eyes narrowed, nearly shut.

"You know damn well what…," she deadpanned, sitting back with her arms crossed.

Candy had to sigh, her eyes betraying the knowful forlornness behind it. As she heard the scratches of Brandy's pencil against her paper stop, all of those news reports and news reporters came flooding back to her. All of those screaming punks, and cops screaming about punks, and frantic punks screaming about manic skinheads returned to her mind. The tipped-over cars, and the people tipping-over cars. The fires, and the wild-eyed skinheads setting fires. The looting, and the cracked-out skinheads looting.

Moreso than the six-week-old scene itself, she remembered the news coverage, although she didn't really have to dig into her memory too deeply as she had last seen it this morning. It was another reporter from Faux News, an older, white-haired man, reading his direct, prosaic notes with more than a hint of belittlement over an often-used helicopter-shot of the Disgusteen Riot's climax that she could probably relay in full detail at that point.

"It won't be that bad," she forced herself to say, finding it hard to look at Mandy directly.

"Oh, ya think so?" The yankee laughed. "Gee, Candy, and here I thought we'd be havin' another Disgusteen Riot on our hands!"

"Listen, M-" Candy began.

"Why that spot?" Mandy went-on, ignoring her. "Of all the fuckin' places you could'a booked for the fest', why there!"

"Look, I just thought we'd start a fuss, or someth-" Candy remained defensive.

"People are already makin' a fuss about this damn thing as is!" Mandy exclaimed.

"I know, bu-" Candy tried again.

"How the hell did that club agree to this!"

"I just wanted-"

"You jus' wanted more people to hate us! We ain't exactly a popular minority around here, ya know? Not after all those people got-"

"A lot of them were punks, too!"

"Well, the media's not sayin' that, now are they!"

"Ms. Welsh! Ms. Luxivy! What is the meaning of all of this commotion in _my _classroom!"

The both of them suddenly shared a feeling that they were being watched. Their eyes hesitantly parted from one another's to see that every other pair in the room was fixated on themselves. The loudness and petulance of their argument had evidently reached quite the point.

"Sorry, Ms. Spencer," Candy muttered, her eyes dropped to look at her booted feet.

She and Mandy shuffled in their chairs to sit forwards, both keeping their heads down to avoid the gazes from everyone else in the room.

"Perhaps the both of you would like to speak with the principal?" Ms. Spencer crossed her arms, still staring daggers at the two punks through her red-rimmed glasses. In spite of this, they were silent. "Ladies?"

"Na'h, Ms. Spence'," Mandy responded, not bothering to raise her head. "We're good…"

"Hmph," the teacher placed her hands on her hips. "Well, let's hope so…"

As Muriel turned back to the board to resume her lecture, a particularly bold student at a table in-front of the Bambies' looked back at them with a smile.

"Yeah, 'ladies'," his eyes and tone weren't as cheerful as the initial smile, which soon faded into a grimacing lip curl as he continued, "we wouldn't want you punks starting another one of your riots in here."

Candy and Mandy's eyes fumed with an as of late familiar anger while Brandy's watered with an equally familiar sorrow, both looks solidified upon the smattering of agreeable murmurs amongst a wide majority of their other peers.

"We didn't do anything," Brandy whined to no one in particular.

"Yeah," Candy grumbled, "but we're punks, and that's good enough for them."

"Doesn't even matter that we got hair…," Mandy added bilfully.

The door to the classroom opened slowly, and a black mane of prickly, scythe-like hair gingerly squeezed its way inbetween the ajared door and its frame until a red devillock aloom before a pale feminine face appeared.

Sandy slinked her massive black-claden body into the room, her spacious person nudging the door almost entirely open in-spite of her best efforts. Her shoes clicked against the floor with every one of her attemptedly-subtle steps, them and Ms. Spencer's voice the most prominent noises in the room. The Walpurgis woman forgot that she was impossible to miss from time to time, and this was clearly one of those times.

Regardless, she made it to her seat in-between Candy and Brandy without any accostision, surely due to a combination of Ms. Spencer's apathy and enthrallment in her own lecture chalkings, and so regarded her efforts fruitfully.

Sandy soon noticed her bandmates' sullen demeanors, their heads hanging low, as if to burry their faces into the table's surface.

"Did I miss something?" she whispered to Candy.

"No," she harshly crooned, "just the usual bullshit…"

Sandy's eyes sank, shortly followed by her head, ultimately assuming the same position as the rest of the band, her hair swallowing her face and Candy Cane's left pigtail.

With her eyes safely fixed onto the table, Brandy grabbed her pencil and picked-up where she had left off with her note-taking earlier on. Sandy soon followed. With their eyes in much the same position, a rare occurrence for Candy and Mandy took place. They also began taking notes, having no better alternative to inconspicuously drone through the remained of the class period, jotting-down key points from Ms. Spencer's somewhat verbose lecture revolving around this six-week unit's particular subject: narcotics. More particularly, hallucinogens.

"-Ecstasy, XTC, Adam-

*Synthesized in 1912

*Extensively used and tested in therapeutic setting

*Hits streets in USA in mid 1980's; Today- Rave Scene. *Effects reported as been very different from other hallucinogens

_*Empathogen_, "Closeness," "_Openness_," objects appear luminescent, _Serenity_, _Noetic_ (see world in a new, fresh way) *Objective: heart rate increase, dryness, jaw clenching, teeth grinding, profuse sweating. Impact on memory?

*Not illegal until 1986 Controlled Substance Act which included analogues of other illegal drugs.

*First used as appetite suppressant

1953: Army tests- massive doses killed rats

1970's Psychiatric use

-LSD-

*Lysergic Acid Diethylamide (the "S" comes from the German word for acid: _Saure)_

*Odorless, colorless and tasteless

*Early years: Key to mind expansion; Today: "Just another drug in the soup, but slowly regaining recreational popularity in certain European countries, notably Germany, among the "counter culture" teenagers

*Not found in nature_, _Semi-synthetic_"_

"RiiiIIiiIiIiiIiiiInnNnNnGgGG!"

The bell finally sounded, soon followed by a disjointed chorus of shutting notebooks, over which Miss Spencer yelled last-minute directions and reminders, all of which fell on deaf ears, at least in-regards to the four Bambies whom had already hurried out the door.


	3. Happiness is a Warm Taffy

**Greetings, true believers! It took me long enough, but I've finally gotten around to finishing what has become the third chapter in this little story of mine. I say "what has become chapter 3" because this one was originally supposed to be about twice as long. However, I felt I had already gone quite long-enough without actually publishing anything, and there seemed to be enough content about halfway through for a unique chapter, and so the original was split down the middle. Really, these next two will be the tail end of this prologue, which seems to have taken much longer to wrap-up than I expected, but it'll be worth it. I promise! **

**Chapter 3: Happiness is a Warm Taffy**

"Alright you," the schoolgirl snarled as she withdrew a dollar from a slightly small pocket on her very small skirt. "You'd better freakin' cooperate this time…"

This wasn't even the first time Candy Cane had confronted this particular juggernaut that day, a fact that only hardened the venomous leer she trained onto her reflection within the glass that served as the barrier between herself and the goodness that was her daily stick of Ichigo-Go™ brand Strawberry Taffy ("Hey-Ho, Let's Ichigo!"™).

Generally, Ms. Welsh would outright shun such shameless corporate pandering to her "alternative" demograph, but she had to make an exception in this particular case, for upon seeing Ichie the Ichigoman's smiling veneer gracing her daily plastic-wrapped stick of gooey warmth with his cheesy green mohawk and leather jacket, she couldn't help but feel a certain gooey warmth within herself that made the world around her feel a bit less rough and cold, because she knew that artificially-flavored wonderment was not far away, and after the unpleasantness of her last class period, said wonderment had never been more needed.

Her eyes were then fixated on her beloved taffy product, it's vibrant red wrapper faded to a more bronzely affair by the sun's rays reaching the candy dispenser's glass through a small window above the school's parting door to the tennis courts. No matter. Ichigo always used cheap light-dilutable coloring for their products' packaging. Their strawberry soda cans became orange, their strawberry yogurt cartons would lighten to a pinkish tint, but the contents inside were always unaltered, not that any of those mattered to Candy, at least not as much as her succulent taffy.

Candy Cane readied her dollar to be fed into the $1 slot on the machine, waiting for its sensors to register the offering and slowly suck-in her currency.

"C'mon, Candy!" Mandy groaned. "Not this again…"

"Hey!" Candy snapped her dollar away from the mechanic vendor to discoursely regard her guitarist. "I didn't get my taffy earlier, because _someone_ just couldn't freakin' wait to get to Ms. Spencer's class! What's the rush now!"

Looking on from behind the two, Sandy's eyes rolled as she breathed harshly through her nose whilst Brandy bit her lip in worry.

"I just wanna leave, alright!" Mandy placed a hand on her hip. "And so what if you didn't get a snack earlier!"

"So I still want a snack now, alright!" Candy snotted-out.

"Don't you get all smart with me!" Mandy took a step towards her singer, effectively in the middle of the hallway.

A few of the students walking down the hall were beginning to take notice of the quarrel that looked to be brewing, two or three even stopping to watch from a distance.

"Should I just stay dumb like you then?" Candy also stepped forward.

Sandy knelt-down, letting her book bag slide off her shoulder, kneeling down lower to unzip its main flap and withdrew the Satanic Bible she had been burying herself in as of late. Mandy's face dropped further upon figuring why she should drop her schoolbag as well. They'd probably be standing there for awhile.

"'You tryin' to be clever, or somethin'!"

"Are you tryin' to piss me off!"

Their auguration was beginning to draw a crowd. More and more passer-bys were gathering around the scene, creating a loose perimeter on either side of the Killer Bambies.

"At least there weren't any people earlier," this wasn't helping the once again near shivering Brandy.

Brandy felt an arm reach around her and pull her in for a quick consoling squeeze before letting go with an even quicker pat on the shoulder, though it didn't do much to ease her weakening legs.

Having tended to Brandy, Sandy's eyes loomed across the spotty circle of students whom had gathered around their group. A few were laughing with one another, intrigued by the prospect of seeing two of those punk girls at each others' throats. Others seemed markedly more unsettled, and with the increasing explosivity of Candy and Mandy's invectfulness, it wasn't hard to see (or hear) why.

"Oh, real cute! I think those pigtails are killin' the circulation to yer brain!"

"At least they're better than that dykie pompadore!"

Brandy felt a clawful hand slowly making its way up towards her hair, tremulous in its wait to desperately grip at any handful of locks it could acquire in order to pry and ultimately tear her focus away from this scene, away from their shouts, away from the crowd's hoots and calls, but mostly away from her friends' arguing.

"Ay, it's got a bow in the back!"

"Dykie in the front, prissy in the back!"

"Go drop dead, Candy!"

"I'll drop you dead in a minute if you keep pissin' me off!"

The crowd of students' "oohs", "ohs", and various other promptful interjections had reached a considerably volumous decibel. They went outwardly unacknowledged by the conflicting half of the foursome, but Brandy heard all of them and none of them. Each call of "kick her ass!" or the cliché "catfight!" began to blend together in a maddening ringing sensation in her ears. The ring was trumped in prominence by the thump-thump-thump nearly pulsing out of her chest, and even that was duped by each of Candy and Mandy's vile aspersions.

"Oh, so that's how it is then!" Mandy gave the redhead a light shove.

"Yeah, 'that's how it is'!" Candy returned the shove in-kind.

The crowd that had been divided between anticipation and fearful dread was now largely in the former camp, exploding at the sudden displays of physicality.

Sandy's thoughts and eyes went down to the Satanic Bible held under her arm.

_"If someone bothers you, **ask them to stop**. If they do not stop, destroy them."_

"You tryin' to make somethin' ah' this!"

"Maybe I am!"

Brandy's hand couldn't quite clamp itself shut, for it was paralyzed in a horrible state of vibration. Her eyes, though tearful and burning, couldn't quite seem to shut, for they were locked onto her friends, whose every terrible word and firey motion towards each other made the red tint that was slowly overcoming the world through Brandy's eyes more prominent.

"Hey, Brandy," the redness substantially dwindled upon Sandy's far-off voice entering her ear.

The drummer could no longer see her friends, as a heavy block of blackness was suddenly thrust before her face. She then felt a stern but caring hand clasp her shoulder.

"Hold this for me," Sandy's instruction was gentle enough, but there was a hardness in her voice that couldn't be entirely concealed.

Brandy raised her hands to tentatively grab the book, almost on auto-pilot as her whole being slowly descended from the rocketous adrenaline that had overtaken her. The book felt weighty, and the fact that it was in her possession alone was very intimidating. Still, her eyes darted around to reassess her now less reddened surroundings, seeing that Sandy was beginning to walk away.

"Sandy," she asked, whimpering. "What are you going to do?"

"Don't worry," Sandy replied. There was a vocal smattering of curiosity amongst the crowd of students as she marched towards the two.

"I think you're talkin' a lot bigger than you can walk, Candy!"

"Oh, you're thinking! That's new!"

"How'd you like a new-"

"HEY!"

Mandy suddenly found herself being easily muscled out of the way by their firebrand bassist who was suddenly standing castigationally in the middle of the temperative twosome. Sandy stood sideways, arms stiffly crossed, feet firmly planted, her bottom lip slightly turned-in as part of a grimacing lip-curl that graced the visceral visage beneath her bloodred bang.

"I'll ask you guys nicely," her eyes loomed to the left and right, alternating between the two. "Would you please stop?"

Only some bemoaned sighs and remarks from the studential onlookers provided the hallway with any sound for the moment. Candy and Mandy, for all their animosity, were left to dejectedly snarl at one another, having to peer past Sandy's stony stature as her eyes pendulated between the two of them. Brandy quaily clutched at the Satanic Bible in her arms, anchoring herself in a fragile state of composure as she looked-on.

"Alright, Sandy," Candy tried to sound unfazed. "Look, we wo-"

"No, _you_ look," Sandy's tone was unnervingly reserved as she turned to face her singer. "I'm really getting sick of having to hear you two bitch and argue all day…"

The redhead crossed her arms, taking a swinging step towards her towering bass-player.

"What's with this whole peace-keeper thing you've been doing all day?" the schoolgirl asked with her head smarmily acrook, not to mention arched back in order to meet eyes with Sandy.

Before she was able to respond, Mandy stepped-up behind Sandy, flicking her on the shoulder.

"Yeah, really!" the Brooklynian began spouting-off as she turned around. "Why do you gotta keep nosin'-in on these things!"

Sandy's brow narrowed harshly at the remark, harshly enough to scare the indignance out of the guitarist's eyes.

"You'd think after six weeks you two would start remembering…," Sandy let the acidic words seeping through her teeth trail-off when her eyes pointed over Mandy's pompadore, directing Candy and Mandy's focus to their drummer across the hall, trembling as she coddled the large book of Sandy's in her arms.

Holding the tome close to herself in a minusculey therapeutic clutch, the drummer watched the typical end to another of her friends' disputes play-out. The whole thing was dosed in more than deja-vu, for it was torturously monotonous at this point, and yet the impained familiarity did nothing to quell the fear that was still ablaze within her.

Brandy wasn't even paying attention to what the three were saying anymore, merely listening to the thunderous beat in her chest that had again risen to prominence in her psyche, promoted by her knowledge of what was to come upon watching Candy and Mandy's faces melt from burning vindication to chillful remorse after a few words from Sandy.

Though she was thankful the fiendish femme's efforts were only verbal this go-around, as opposed to her more hands-on approach from earlier on and a few other past instances, Brandy knew that the facial dips from anger to sadness always meant one thing.

Sure enough, the drummer saw Candy Cane bounding towards her, face and eyes all aworry, well-ahead of the more outwardly-reserved Mandy.

Candy was always the first to rush to her consolicial aid, as she was that night six weeks ago, as she was after that terrible, terrible white flash that sent Brandy falling from her stool with that terrible, terrible ringing in her ears. She could still remember Rebecca crouched over her, speech and eyes frenzied and mad with worry, audible even over the manic firestorm of screams and sirens that was erupting around them.

"Brandy! Are you ok! Are you ok! Brandy!"

And there Candy was, panicking before her on her own behalf, just as she did that night six weeks ago. She seemed certain that it would help, but it only made the panic attack, as her doctor called it, all the more horrible. Brandy's adrenaline would race again, the red shade would return, the horrible ringing would return, the maddening sound of her rapid heartbeat wound pound against her skull, and all the while Candy would hold her and slather her in sincere, scared, softly-meant words of reassurance, just as she did that night six weeks ago.

"we're so sorry, Brandy! Everything's ok now, though. Ok? Will you be ok!"

The worst part of It was, even though every fiber in her sonically-terrorized being called for it, Brandy couldn't allow her hand to clamp upon a set of hairs to rip at until she felt that burning asuagance in the depths of her follicles. She couldn't allow herself to shiver at the break of her psychosomatic feverishness. She could only lock herself up, reserve herself in a show of thanks to her friend's efforts until she could let her body come down from the horrible ride in contained inner-processes until she could shake the memories.

"Are you ok now, Brandy?" Candy asked, stepping back from her final quick embrace, her words much slower now.

"Yeah," the ringing in her ears was nearly unbearable, "I'm ok now, guys…"

She wasn't ok, but at least that answer always got the attention off of her, which would allow her to be so much more quickly.

"Alright," the group's singer breathed a sigh of relief. "Is everything ok now?"

"Mhm," Sandy nodded dryly

.

"Yeah, yeah," Mandy quickly answered. "Go get your candy if ya want."

With that, Candy practically pranced over to the candy dispenser, unable to stifle a grin as she fingered-in the Ichigo™ Taffy's representational code on the machine's keypad.

The gathering of curious students had lost its curiosity a few minutes ago upon realizing they weren't going to see any sort of physical altercation between any of the punky foursome, leaving the hallway much quieter than it had been since Brandy was last sensorially coherent. She found herself eyeing the cover of the Satanic Bible inquisitively, absently pondering the cultural origins of the name Anton LaVey.

"Hey," it was Sandy, she discovered upon looking-up, "ou alright?"

Sandy put a hand out, to which the drummer gladly returned the book.

"I, I will be soon…," Brandy replied with somewhat of a smile, getting a quick pat on the head.

"Good," Sandy smiled, looking over her shoulder at their vocalist.

Candy Cane waited interminably for the cylindrical claw that held her long-for longed stick of strawberry taffy to complete its crazingly-slow rotation that would award the schoolgirl with her prize. Finally, it was relinquished to fall the short ways down to the machine's reachable cabinet, hitting its basen with a "thunk" that echoed within the dispenser's walls.

The others watched over her shoulder as Candy swiped-up her treat and went about unwrapping it feverishly. Without so much as looking at the taffy, she was ready to pop it into her mouth and upon her tongue, however, there was another interruption.

"Okay, cool, boss, ace," Mandy crossed her arms. "Now can we get out of here, please?"

"Alright, alright!" Candy laughed. "Geez, Mandy. What do you think's gonna happen if we don't hurry out of here?"

"Now just what have we told you punk girls about loitering in our hallways after hours?"

The dainty voice hit each of the four 'punk girls' like an zeppelinial earwig, piercing through their brains with a microsecond of a shock that turned into a certain sensation of dread that could only be evoked by the particular trio of women that one voice always trumpeted the glittering, peppy arrival of.

With a mutual grimace, the Killer Bambies turned to face the spirited trio whom they held with the highest degree of disdain. Their threesome's perpetually springy and chipper animation was enough to make even the pluckiest of the plucky recoil at the dangerously-high levels of concentrated sugar their demeanors carried with them, and yet said sugaroisty was not without its bitter tinge, for these girls were the bells of the high school ball, and they knew it.

"See? Tommorrow's prep-rally day! I knew they'd stay late." Mandy muttered.

"I'd take that crowd over these three…," Brandy whined.

"Just, just look at all those bright colors, and… and all that _glitter_…," Sandy winced on nearly every word.

"I freakin' HATE my old cheer squad…," Candy Cane groaned.


	4. Back in the BECKY

**Hello there, mates. It took me more than long enough, but I've finally sat down and finished this fourth chapter of "Never mind the Acorns…". Hopefully you'll all feel it was worth the admittedly long, long wait. Prepare for a bit more exposition, as this is the final bit of what's become a rather lengthy prologue, but the stage is set for a lot more "action" in the next chapter (which I'll try to bring to you lot much, much sooner than I did this one). So, without further adu, here's chapter four!**

**Chapter 04: Back in the B.E.C.K.Y.**

The Killer Bambies had no alternative but to stand in the center of the hallway as the tryingly-toity twinklic triune bounded towards them, a perpetual pep in their steps, or rather their near-skipping strides.

The leader of the peppy pack came to an acumentable stop in front of Candy Cane. The redhead's leer traversed the cheerleader head-to-toe, starting with her blonde, pig-tailed locks, the pigtails tied into form with blue bows and further accented into ringlets by way of smaller white ribbons. Her outfit was regrettably familiar to Candy. In fact, she was fairly certain it used to be hers, barring the new name that had been rhinestoned onto the top.

"Cindy," Candy mustered a mock smile. "Are you guys already done getting 'drilled' by the football team?"

Cindy and her two secondaries gave the remark a seemingly automated laugh entirely devoid of mirth.

"Actually, _Becky_," Cindy's smile widened as Candy's eyes narrowed, "we were just on our way to practice for the pep-rally tomorrow."

"Oh, so you haven't even started sucking jock dick, then?" Candy cocked an eyebrow, her smile returning.

"Cute, Becky," Cindy huffed, her hands attaching to her hips haughtily. "Real cute."

Cindy's eyes authoritatively went to the girl to her right.

"Ya know, Welsh," Windy stepped-over, hands also at her hips, "Someone wit' hair as bad as yours shouldn' be talkin', alright?"

"'Because that blue-tipped weave of yours is just terrific…," Sandy placidly quipped.

Windy broke into a dutious stride, her athletic brown legs, muscular and base-fit, engaged in a slow trod towards Sandy, who's piercing eyes were suddenly met with a halting gloved hand that nearly touched her red bang.

"Girl, I don' even know where to begin wi'chu," Her hand returned to her hips as she went about dressing down the bassist as to how she was dressed-up. "I mean, that 'all black' stuff went-out three years ago…," Windy's gaze eased to the left, stopping on Mandy. "Not that you the most out-of-date of you girls' group."

"What's your deal?" Mandy crossed her arms. She already knew the answer.

"Girl, you just all kindza messed-up!" Windy was forced into a fit of laughter, her neon-blue eye-shadow on full display as her eyes closed on this particular fit of cachinnation at Mandy's expense. She went-on. "I mean, damn! Jus' what decade are you from, the 50s?"

"Yeah," the rockabilly coldly smiled with a nod. "I'm from '1950-fuck off', papershaker."

"Do you girls think you're clever?" Cindy spoke-up from behind the black cheerleader.

"I don't know," the makings of a smile slightly curved Sandy's lips. "Does Windy there think she's fashionable?"

"I'm mo' fashionable dan you, girl!" Cindy zipped forward to restrain Windy on her outburst, reducing her attempted charge for Sandy to a bit of ruffling against Cindy's grasp. Her temper cooled slightly, allowing her to switch-up her verbal approach as her eyes loomed past the goth girl. "I know I be lookin' better than that drummer of yours."

Brandy's eyes perked-up.

"Piss off, Windy," Candy Cane placed a curbing hand on her bassist's arm. "It's not like we all have rich fashion-designer moms…"

Windy clicked her lips.

"Shoo'. I should let you have her fo' a day; My momma would be makin' you girls look good," she returned to her post at Cindy's right, turning in. Cindy's hard eyes blinked to the girl at her left.

"You ladies really should consider taking Windy up on her offer," Mindy slid the ever-present pocket bible out from behind her back as she stepped closer to the punkers, her voice at its familiar softness. "I've always thought most of you had it rough." She paused, assumably for emphasis. "You know, without parents and all…"

"I think you should leave 'em alone, Mindy," Mandy barked, "but I guess her mom's help would be better than any 'help' you've got t-"

"Oh, relax," Mindy gently cut-in, pausing to give a smile to Sandy and Brandy. "That was all so long ago…"

"Four years," Sandy fumed.

The holy-rolling flyer's head dipped on a bemoanful noise.

"You girls have to realize that we meant well…," Mindy persisted, her car-salesman smile returning. "We were only trying to do what we thought He would want us to do."

"So being pelted with eggs in the camp showers while people shouted Leviticus at us was 'well-meaning'?" Sandy, though inabsolvely acidic in annunciation, did her best to appear unshaken in the face of such memories.

"You all told us we were going to burn in hell!" Brandy, on the other hand, was stammering, almost shouting. Sandy's arm was tense around her.

"Now girls…," Mindy couldn't help a soft laugh, pausing to get her words together. "You see, we weren't doing those things out of hate; We were trying to save you from-"

"Save us from what, ourselves!" Sandy cut her off through gritted teeth, leaning forward.

"Fr-from your sinful life-choices," Mindy was audibly disnerved, though her familiarity with such statements slightly lessened the obviousness of her frayed state.

"Oh, so it's a choice then?" the bassist's speech was still slow, but unsettlingly sharp, gradually rising in her throat as her words progressed.

"It's His word," Mindy firmly replied, clutching her small Bible more tightly. "He believes it to be a choice, therefore I believe it."

"For real?" Candy decided to interject. "I always thought you wacko fundies weren't big on 'choice'."

"That's because infanticide doesn't fit into His plan," Mindy and Candy had had this argument before.

"Well, he's always seemed like shit to me anyway," Sandy stated plainly.

This lead to an uneasy silence for a moment. Even Mandy and Brandy were forced to give Sandy a worrying look.

"Oh my…," Mindy soon broke the silence, the tips of her fingers covering her lips as her tremulous blue eyes fluttered fawningly to the tiny tome pressed against her bare midriff. As she raised her eyes, something caught them mid-ascent. "What is that book under your arm, Sandy?"

Sandy grinned darkly.

"Oh, this? Here, take a look."

"G'ah!" Mindy recoiled at being faced with the cover of Anton LeVay's beelzebible, unthinkingly thrusting-out her own bible protectively and sinking behind it. Sandy's fiendish grin was all the more reinforced.

After a disbelieving roll of her eyes, Cindy quickly strongarmed the incapacitated brunette off to the side as she returned to an engageful position before Candy Cane.

"What's that in _your _hand, Rebecca?" the spotter cocked a hard eye.

"It's taffy," Candy had almost forgotten she had purchased it. She held it up against her middle finger.

"Cute, cute," Cindy laughingly scoffed, again forced into a disdainful twirl of her eyes. "Honestly, I can't believe you're still chewing that crap."

Candy could only be bothered to retort with little more than a mockingly-neanderthalic reiteration of Cindy's last few syllables as she went about peeling-off the wrapping of her Ichigo-Go brand Taffy. The head cheerleader was unable to restrain a knowing smile as she watched Candy Cane pop the orange taffy into her mouth. The redhead made it through three or so chews before a look of shock flashed over her face. Green eyes abulge and lips contorted, the schoolgirl violently spat out the taffy onto the floor.

"Ew!" Mandy jerked a foot away from the orange gob that splattered just short of her boot-tip. "Shit, Candy! What the-!"

"What the fuck was that!" Candy whirled to face Cindy.

Cindy was thrown into a haughty laugh. Windy and Mindy cuedly joined-in.

"What do you mean, Becky?" her smile was cemented by Candy's intense scowl. "You haven't had the new Acorn flavored taffy?"

"'Acorn flavored taffy'?" even Mandy found that perturbingly odd sounding. It rested as well on her tongue as did the taffy itself on Candy's.

Candy Cane feverently smoothed-together the disemboweled wrapper until its gaudy labels and texts were legible.

"ICHIGO-GO TAFFY - _***NEW***_ Acorn Avalanche!"

It was confirmed. It was real, and yet it just couldn't be.

"No…," Rebecca Welsh's voice was far away. Her eyes were stonedly fixed onto every crumply word.

"Mhm!" Cindy squeaked with a nod, quite abeam. "It's part of the Healthy Minds section of the providence's new Effortless Education Act." She couldn't help but proudly add, "Daddy helped."

"Ah, yeah. I forgot that passed," Mandy laughed, adding, "and it's 'the Effective Education Act'."

Mandy sounded as though she had more to say, but stopped to give Candy a concerned glance.

"Who really cares?" Cindy laughed, throwing her hands up.

"So what kinda accountin' tricks did 'daddy' pull for them to pay for lobbyists this time?" Mandy's face tightened gloweringly.

"Oh, please," Cindy shook her head. "You know they don't have to front the entire bill anymore."

"Nah, 'course not," Mandy gestured towards Mindy. "Her mommy and her church help 'em out now. Typical Republican stuff."

"I thought he was a democrat," Cindy absentmindedly mused to herself.

"Mother and the rest of the congregation thought it was a worthy cause," Mindy happily explained. "It's just another way we try to better the community."

"Geez," Mandy smirked. "Ya'know, why don't you guys just go full-circle with it and have Windy's mom make some robes for Mindy's mom's churchies?"

"Yeah," Sandy shrugged, "They might look nicer the next time they come to picket one of our shows."

Cindy's eyes suddenly lit-up.

"Oh, that's right!" she glowed snottishly. "You girls have a show tonight, don't you?"

Windy acted as if overcome with thought, stepping closer to Cindy as she tapped a finger to her chin.

"Yeah, you're right, Cindy," her bemused tone was no less ingenuous. "Ain't it at the same place that they started that real' big riot?"

Windy watched the band's expressions instantaneously sour.

"Aw shit!" she was cackling. "I think I made 'em mad! Hahaha!"

Cindy patted her on the shoulder, both as a means of curbiture and acknowledgment.

"It was fun talking to you girls again," Cindy gave them an exaggerated smile, absent-mindedly twirling a hand through her ringlets, "but we really should get going. Kay?"

With that and an agreeing giggle from Windy and Mindy, Cindy turned on a heel and began her departure with her fellow cheerleaders in-toe, giggling all the way down the hall until they rounded a corner out of sight of the Bambies.

"Cunts," Sandy spat.

"Tell me about it," Mandy concurred.

With a temperative breath, the bassist flopped-open her Satanic Bible again, taking a moment to smile at the recent memory of its affects on Mindy, and thumbed back to the page she last left the book on. Before she could put eyes to text however, she caught Brandy approaching her, sunken and needy. Sandy lowered the tome to her side and wrapped an arm around Brandy, letting her hand rest atop the emotional drummer's head as it laid upon her chest. Brandy's arms lightly clutched themselves around the taller woman's form in a soft embrace.

As her eyes followed her fingers nimbling through Brandy's thin blonde hair, a thought occurred to Sandy.

"So when do we have to be at the club for load-in, Candy?" she hadn't bothered to take her purring eyes off of Brandy until realizing the singer never responded. "Candy?"

The other three Bambies' turned to see their vocalist standing before the hallway's vending machine. Her face practically plastered against the glass as her eyes solemnly dredged the machine's rows for any sign of her adored taffy product. Her findings were unfortunately sobering.

"It's really gone…," the singer sunkenly crooned. "They really took it away…"

The rest of the band met eyes with each other. The unverbalized question hung in the air until Mandy opted to begin a delicate approachment of their distraught frontwoman.

"Ah, don't worry about it, Candy," she stopped just short of patting a hand against the redhead's shoulder, noticing that she was transfixed on the acorn taffy wrapper she still held in her fingers. Mandy softly added, "I mean, it was jus' taffy, right?"

Candy Cane raised her head, her now firey green eyes reflected clearly in the glass.

"Just taffy?" she turned to Mandy, who nodded at the question. "_Just _taffy?"

Sandy felt Brandy's grip around the arm her fuller embrace had been mutually relegated to tighten, moving the bassist to eye the other half of the band's current exchange warily.

"Yeah," the guitarist laughed crossly. "It's 'just' candy, Candy."

A beat of tension hung between the two for a moment, but Candy Cane ultimately reserved herself to a spatting groan and a heavy roll of her eyes, dismissing her volatilic level of indignance with a fling of the offending taffy's wrapper, leaving it to slowly flutter to the tiles below as she parted from the vending machine's vicinity.

"Let's see how you'd deal without that stupid comb of yours," her level of indignity hadn't lowered enough to spare a grumbling remark as she went to pick-up her schoolbag from the floor, however.

"Whaddya say to me!" Mandy stomped a heel.

Candy took a moment to scoop-up and sling a single strap of her backpack up and over her shoulder before responding. The placement of her bag effectively positioned her before the rest of the band rather plinthly.

"Look, we all have our own little ways to get through the damn day," she huffed upon standing. "You have your stupid hair maintenance, Brandy's got schoolwork, and right now Sandy's got that… that stupid Warlock Book, or whatever!"

"'Satanic Bible'," Sandy humouredly corrected.

"Look, whatever!" Candy flung her arms up with the dismissal, abruptly continuing. "It's not even the freakin' taffy that's pissing me off. It's that those prissy bimbos were able to just get it taken-away from me by the damn government!"

The respective looks of the rhythm section suddenly mutualized into an exasperated grimace upon hearing the last word of Candy's outburst, for they both knew what type of conversation it would undoubtedly lead to.

As if on cue, Mandy crossed her arms, regarding their vocalist with a coarse look.

"Y'ah, forget about all those corporations that are really runnin' things," she said with hot-blooded sarcasm.

"Because the government just wants to nanny all of us," Candy returned the sarcasm in-kind.

"It probably would without all the private interests n' shit," Mandy retorted.

"Well, maybe I don't wantit to!" Candy yelled. "It just tried to nanny my damn snacks and it took my freakin' taffy away!"

By this point, Sandy's focus had retreated to a chapter on the nineteen Echonian Keys. Brandy even found herself passively reading from the side of the grimly-garbed girl's shoulder, being too short to read over it, not that Sandy's mane of hair would allow that anyway.

"Why is everything the government does bad to you, Candy?" Mandy sneered.

"Because it is!" Candy exclaimed. "I mean, Hello! What do you think I've been complaining about! They took _my _taffy! That's like a grown-up taking candy from a baby, or a freakin' pedophile taking aw-"

"Aren't you taking this a little hard, Candy?" Sandy decided to interpolate.

"For real!" Mandy concurred. "Just 'cause this is bad for you doesn't mean it's 'bad'."

Candy started to argue, but had to stop and cock an eyebrow at the guitarist's statement.

"Yeah, yeah," the psychobilly went-on, now moving towards the candy dispenser, "you lost your taffy, but the obesity rates and stuff like that's been going-up around here lately, ya know? It's like, it ain't our problem, but this healthy stuff their packin' into the machines is probably good fo' the rest of the community. Get me?"

Candy shrugged.

"Pfff. Whatevah," Mandy spat, turning to the machine. "I was jus' tryin' to make you feel better…" She began eyeing a few of the new choices in the vending machine's circular talons that hadn't been there before this afternoon. "Ya know, some of this stuff might not be too bad."

"Maybe you should try it then," Candy Cane shot-down another attempt at assuaging her pessimistic air.

"Maybe I should!" Mandy snapped. "And maybe you should quit gettin' all jazzed-up about dumb little shit!"

The guitarist went about giving the dispenser's contents a closer eye, finding that many of them were largely similar to those of the post-Healthy Minds selection, sans the "low-fat" and "less sugar" labels most everything now boasted. She decided upon some sort of chocolate bar, feeding a dollar into the Americanized $1 slot that always reminded her of home in-spite of her Incantonality. After keying-in her choice's brief numeric code, she watched as the metal loop slowly began to relinquish her candy bar, only to see it fall against the glass, wedged between it and the row at an angle.

"What?" Mandy winced, slapping the machine on the side in an attempt to dislodge the chocolate bar. She had no such luck. "Come on!"

The others watched as Mandy rapped a balled fist against the machine another two times, each smack thudding throughout the hallway.

"You stupid piece'a Bourgeois shit!" the Brooklynian took to violently shaking the machine to the best of her ability, though it did little more than create a great metallic rumbling until she gave-up.

"Godddamit!" Mandy stomped a foot, staring daggers at the chocolate bar that remained in its diagonal bondage.

"Maybe you shouldn't be so loud, Mandy," Brandy hesitantly suggested, looking as if she were about to retreat behind Sandy.

"Ay, do you see this!" Mandy whirled around to face the rest of the group, pointing wildly back at the candy machine. "This piece of shit took my money, that I earned, that I worked for, and I get jack in-return! Take, take, take! Just like all those fuckin' businessmen!"

"Calm down, Mandy," Sandy mordantly advised.

"You calm down, Sandy!" Mandy shouted.

"Seriously, Mandy!" Candy rapidly whispered through gritted teeth. "We were supposed to be out of here, like, fifteen minutes ago, so shut the fuck up before someone hears you already!"

Mandy turned back and struck the machine with a pointed kick, a loud "pang" blasting about the hall, followed by a series of cusses,

"Stupid capitalist junk-heap! Bourgeoisie shit! Whacked-out money-grubbing-"

"Ms. Luxivy!"

Mandy's inconsolable ravings ended at the sound of an authoritative, patricianic voice.

"Oh, shit," Candy verbalized the mood of the group as they all turned to see Ms. Spencer pointedly stomping in their direction, the backs of her red high-heels nearly angled off the ground in the exacerbality of her stride.

"Just what do you believe requires so much vulgar shouting, young lady?" Muriel came to a stop before Mandy, whom backed-away to stand with the rest of the band, "and just what business do the four of you ladies have still being in the school halls after hours?" None of the Bambies responded. "Well, girls?"

"We were just leaving, Ms. Spencer," Sandy's cheeks reddened as her eyes snuck-off to the side.

"M-Mandy was just upset at the vending machine," Brandy explained, taking hold of Sandy's left arm for support.

"Clearly," the teacher remarked, "but that still fails to enlighten me as to why you four are loitering about the hallways some twenty minutes after classes have ended, much less as to why you four felt the need to harass our lead cheerleaders."

A wave of hot anger washed-over the Killer Bambies, though it went unnoticed by Muriel, who's eyes instead trained particularly on Brandy.

"Ms. Woore?" she asked, her voice becoming slightly less dictatorial in accommodation of her addressee's well-known fragility.

"Yes, m'am?" Brandy asked, a slight worry shining in her eyes.

"I'd recommend you cease holding onto Ms. Onzig's arm," Ms. Spencer explained. "Such could be misconstrued as a PDA, and…," the teacher couldn't help a nervous laugh in the face of the notion her words were about to suggest. "Well, we wouldn't want your fellow students to get the wrong idea, as it were."

"No, of course we wouldn't," Sandy's eyes became very dark.

Brandy slowly relinquished her light grip on Sandy's arm, clearly uncomfortable. "Right…"

"Do you ladies realize that your bullying made the poor girls late for pep-rally practice?" Muriel went-on. "I realize you four girls aren't ones to pay any mind towards politics, but Ms. Cindy Elthatcher's father's company had quite the hand in attaching the Healthy Minds section to the Effective Education bill that recently passed, so the last thing her stressed father needs to hear is that his poor daughter is being subjected to brutish treatment here at school. Do I make myself clear?"

"We're sorry, Ms. Spencer," Mandy could hardly bring herself to utter such a statement.

Muriel could only shake her head.

"I'm afraid an apology will not suffice in this instance," she explained. "The only course of action that strikes me as an appropriate one is to have you ladies attend what's left of after-school detention this afternoon."

The Killer Bambies' earlier wave of shared anger was swept-away by another of shock as the ramifications of Ms. Spencer's sentence dawned upon them.

"But Ms. Spencer!" Candy Cane began her fevered plea. "We have to be at the club for our show tonight by eight!"

"Detention ends at six, Ms. Welsh," Ms. Spencer flippantly explained.

"But the club's across town," Sandy picked things up with a less stammerous tone. "We'd have to be at the bus station by six to get there on-time."

"Perhaps you should have thought of that before you girls decided to go about causing trouble," Ms. Spencer emphasized the fact that she was quite done bargaining and arguing by turning around to begin walking. "Come along, ladies."

The band hesitated, staying behind to watch Ms. Spencer march-off towards the detention area. They all leaned towards one another in a sort of huddle.

"What are we gonna do?" Mandy asked, whispering.

"We've gotta think of something!" Brandy helplessly stressed.

"I know, I know!" Candy replied. "Alright, maybe we can-"

"Ladies?" Ms. Spencer called.

The Bambies started on their unenthusiastic trek, following Ms. Spencer to detention, worriment towards their scheduled show later that night aburn in their minds.

"We'll think of something," Candy assuredly whispered. "Nothing's stopping us from getting to that show."

**I do hope this chapter was an enjoyable read. I feel I should mention that if you found the politics touched-on in this chapter to be rather… "Americanized", it's because, well, I'm an American, and thus have a largely American perspective on such matters. I did my best to appropriate said politics to the setting, but I'm far from an authority on Canadian politics or current events, so forgive me if things still seem a bit off.**


End file.
